Author: Jamie

At first I couldn’t really find much to say about Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, much like we discussed how nothing can be said about Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, until the narrator mentioned imaginary in one of his footnotes. This is number 27 which appears on pages… Continue reading Imagined Nation

In class today we were discussing how Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a beautiful, experimental novel that can’t be easily articulated. I believe I’ve found at least one “smart” thing to say about it, which is the subtlety of loss the prose expresses. One passage in particular highlights this delicacy: “Even though Dad’s coffin… Continue reading Nothing to Say

Upon reflection, the Earthseed verses scattered throughout Parable of the Sower remind me of the Tao te Ching. Rhetorically they’re very similar, although the content is extremely different. The Tao te Ching is a religious text that was (debatably) written by Lao Tzu in the 6th century B.C. that influenced Buddhism and Chinese religion in general.… Continue reading Change in the Way

In this past week’s reading of Parable of the Sower we learned that Lauren’s younger brother, Keith, dies in a gruesome manner and neither she nor their dad cries. Lauren says she’s never seen her dad cry, and perhaps because she looks up to him so much, she doesn’t cry either. Keith is her brother… Continue reading I hardly noticed there weren’t tears in her eyes

Octavia Butler must have had quite a few issues arise when she began her novel that is set thirty years in the future. One of the hardest I believe she must have had to contend with was that of technology; how can you predict what technological advances will be made in thirty years? She does… Continue reading Future Technology

Our talk today about the New Brotherhood Army, otherwise known as the cannibals, reminded me of Montaigne’s essay entitled “Of Cannibals”. In his essay he details some of the rituals that these “barbarians” practice on a daily or seasonal basis, including eating the flesh of an enemy of war after killing him. The Europeans in… Continue reading Cannibals

Last week we focused a lot on opposites, and the dichotomy between Earth and space is one that we didn’t discuss. The specific passage I want to highlight is the one that Prof. Sample pointed to earlier, the one on page 170. Instead of looking at the relationship between the astronauts and the kosmonauts, I… Continue reading Earth vs Space